Speaking during an independent inspector’s public examination of the plan, Michael de la Haye said the Our Hospital policy (CI3) should not be in the plan.
The policy shows the development site for the new hospital at Overdale surrounded by a blue line, and states that proposals for the development of the hospital ‘will be afforded the highest level of priority’, while proposals for alternative use of the land will not.
Mr de la Haye said yesterday: ‘It does seem to muddle politics and planning policy.’
He said that this ‘blue’ zone overlapped with others such as green zones and protected open spaces, adding: ‘The Island Plan contains very specific policies that cover these zones. It is my submission that if the plan is to be robust and gain the confidence of the public, it’s vital that planning process will be consistent and that all applications made in a particular zone should be treated in the same way.’
Mr de la Haye said that it put anyone determining the application in an ‘almost impossible position’ when weighing up the hospital application with green-zone policies.
‘In my view, policy is simply unnecessary,’ he said.
There was much vital infrastructure, he said, including secondary schools, power plants and water treatment plants, that did not have a blue line drawn around them.
However, Natasha Day, senior planning policy officer and Island Plan review programme manager, said there was a precedent for designating land for a specific purpose.
‘There are a number of other sites designated in the plan for community use,’ she said, including land for housing, education and sports sites, and ‘any other specific purpose that the minister considers necessary in order to meet the needs of the community’.
She said: ‘I think we all recognise that this is going to be a very significant development which is going to have a number of planning tensions that are going to be considered and weighed up by the decision-maker.’
But Mr de la Haye replied: ‘It seems to me that the government is trying to give itself a trump card that the public doesn’t have the right to.’
It also emerged that it is not certain whether the hospital application would be considered under the existing Island Plan or the Bridging Island Plan once it is approved, with the government working on the ‘assumption’ that it would be determined under the Bridging Plan.
Mr de la Haye called it ‘absolute nonsense’ that an independent planning inspector could be reviewing the hospital project under the new plan. Deputy John Young announced this week that there would be a public inquiry into the new-hospital site.
